Wednesday, 27 April 2011

I was jumping out of my skin when I read about this!! I'm very jealous...I'd give a lot of things to be there and see this.

Over 100 Northern right whales have been observed off of Cape Cod Bay recently - the largest congregation ever recorded. Considering there's only about 450 of these animals left in the entire world...that's a pretty big chunk of the population.

They're been attracted by the unusually large and long-lasting plankton bloom that's happening this spring. The whales feed mainly on copepods - tiny oil-rich crustaceans suspended in the water column.

Their presence is exciting, but right whales are vulnerable to ship strikes, and having so many concentrated in one area ups the risk. However, Dan McKiernan, deputy director of the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Division, happily reports that no whales have thus far been struck.

Saturday, 23 April 2011

It's been a busy week. The numerous religious holidays are upon us, but besides that we've had both Earth Day and the one-year anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. But don't worry - it hasn't gone unnoticed. So for our dear Mother Earth, let's have a look at what exactly is happening one year after the blowout that led to the greatest environmental disaster in US history.

"As the one-year anniversary of the BP oil spill approaches, some scientists have deemed the health of the Gulf of Mexico as 'nearly back to normal,' though countless workers involved in cleaning up the aftermath of the disaster are reporting mysterious and unexplained illnesses."

The people employed by BP and related agencies to clean up the mess in the Gulf have been consistently reporting symptoms such as severe headaches, nausea, respiratory infections, trouble breathing, dizziness, constant cough, rashes and other ailments. Although BP will be quick to tell you there is no definite correlation between these symptoms and working at the cleanup sites - the trend is clear. People are sick.

"During the hot summer cleanup last summer, Andre [a cleanup responder] says planes would fly overhead spraying chemical dispersants that would drift over the workers, burning people’s skin and making it hard to breathe. Andre says he watched workers collapse from exposure to toxic fumes of the oil. Soon, Andre says he succumbed himself and spent days in the hospital with 'tubes and IV coming out of everyplace in my body.'"

To add insult to injury (literally), when Andre tried to ring BP about the $21,000 in medical costs they agreed to pay for, he found the line had been disconnected.

So where does BP stand on its response program? Ask Ken Feinberg, the man put in charge of dolling out the $20 billion set aside for claims against BP:

"The program is working in terms of money going out the door. We're spent! We're paid out! In the last seven months we're approaching $4 billion, including about $1.7 billion for Louisiana."

The people of Louisiana and other Gulf states, however, are not as satisfied. In a meeting with Mr. Feinberg himself, several voices stood out among the crowd:

"You know, Tony Hayward waned his life back, but everybody in this building wants their life back...You say you've paid so many people in Lafourche [Louisiana]? I don't know one of them."

"What about the people, myself included, that's lost everything that they had? Everything that they've worked for, everything that they took pride in? And you can't get no help from nobody, because there is none. Because ya'll tell everybody that everything's fine in the Gulf of Mexico. Don't worry about nothin'. Everything's gonna be back to normal...When in fact, you're sitting there lying to our faces."

"We had the best [shrimp] product in the world - Now we're known as an oil product!"

And talks of expanding offshore drilling are on the rise! Can you believe it?!

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters "Some of the members of Congress are acting as though the Deepwater Horizon well oil spill never happened."

Says David Yarnold, president of the National Audubon Society, "In the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska in 1989, lawmakers passed sweeping new laws raising the financial liability of oil companies, expanding cleanup demands and improving the strength of tanker hulls. This time, they’ve done nothing."

So the effects on the human population of the Gulf of Mexico are pretty clear...but are similar things happening to the marine life? The truth is, science doesn't know - and probably won't know for some time - but the people of the Gulf have their own observations.

"This is Dead...This is Dead...This is Dead..." says Nick Collins as he sorts through his oyster catches. "It's the biggest oyster kill in Louisiana history, probably in the Gulf Coast's history...And I wish I wasn't part of it, I wish I wasn't here."

Dead dolphins and turtles have been washing up on the shores in record numbers. Patches of seabed are smothered and dead. Oil continues to wash ashore. And yet it's been difficult to find data on the long-term effects and environmental impacts. LaTosha Brown, Director of the Gulf Coast Fund, describes it as "The Great Gulf-Coast Experiment" - and she's not half wrong.

So what needs to happen that hasn't happened yet?

"First of all, there has to be an acknowledgement that there hasn't been of the severity of the damage to the ecosystems and to the communities that rely on these ecosystems. Then, number two, if that happens, there has to be meaningful, sustained and community-informed response or decision-making about restoring - to the full extent of that impact - what needs to be done. And neither of those two mandates have been met or are really well on their way to being met," says Derrick Evans, Director of Turkey Creek Community Initiatives.

There is still oil in the Gulf. The disaster isn't over. We're beginning to get a clear idea of what is happening to the human life of the area, but it may still take years to understand the full environmental impacts. Don't let a few news articles or commercials tell you everything in the Gulf of Mexico is "back to normal." We are still fighting this battle. The residents are still fighting this battle. The marine life will continue to fight this battle for a very, very long time. Everything is not okay in the Gulf. A year on, and we've still got a hell of a lot of work to do.

Thursday, 7 April 2011

So what happened in the meantime? Well, I'm sure you've all heard by now about the second Gulf oil spill. It's just kind of amazing...the things that go on in this world...

For those late to the party, here's a rundown:

Slicks were sighted via helicopter on 18 March around the same area as the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling site. There were multiple reports of slicks about 100 miles long. It was confirmed on 20 March that the oil was not coming from the Deepwater Horizon site.

"State agents traced back the oil to an Anglo-Suisse well about 30 miles southeast of Grand Isle that had been plugged for permanent abandonment. It's not clear how much oil leaked from the well, but it's surely more than the 5 gallons Anglo-Suisse originally told the Coast Guard had leaked."

According to Anglo-Suisse, the leak has been plugged. However, evidence suggested that oil continued to flow days later.

New oil has been found on Louisiana shores, and cleanup crews still working almost a full year later on the BP spill now have an added burden.